Summary: Abstract--The emergence and evolution of cooperation
among selfish individuals is a key question of theoretical
biology. Uncertainty of outcomes of interactions between
individuals is an important determinant of cooperative
behavior. Here we describe a model that allows the analysis of
the effects of such uncertainty on the level of cooperation. We
show that in iterated cooperation games the level of cooperation
increases with the level of outcome uncertainty. We show that
this is the case if the individuals communicate about their
cooperation intentions and also if they do not communicate
their intentions.
I. INTRODUCTION
MERGENCE and evolution of cooperation in communities
of selfish individuals is a cornerstone of theoretical
biology research. While cooperation is common among a
wide range of animals, plants and microbes [1-3], it is not
very clear why selfish and possibly unrelated individual
organisms would help others, who may also compete with
them for resources. Current theories suggest that cooperation
may be rooted in kin or similarity-based selection [4-6], and